


Calculated Risks

by gallagherfamilyreunion (PrincessPeach)



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - James Bond Fusion, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Gen, M/M, lol I can't believe there is a tag for that last one?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-30
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-11 00:19:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2045775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessPeach/pseuds/gallagherfamilyreunion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Super-suave secret agent/sex fiend Ian Gallagher is assigned to infiltrate a notorious Chicago crime family. This is gonna be trouble. James Bond AU but you're probably fine even if you don't know much about those movies/books.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calculated Risks

**Author's Note:**

> Rated for language/brief sex, also includes mentions of guns/weapons/general destruction. I guess this is technically a crossover/AU for Skyfall era because I couldn't resist including my favorite M and Q #sorrynotsorry

One of the many, many things MI-6 didn’t tell you when they recruited you was how much fucking running there was going to be.

Ian Gallagher, code name 007, appreciated a good cardio workout as much as anyone, but when he’d pictured his life as a secret agent there had been a lot more tuxedo-wearing and martini-drinking, and fewer foot chases through crowded tube stations during rush hour.

And yet there he was, hot in pursuit of yet another cunning, up-to-no-good burglar who was trying to escape London with information that was undoubtedly vital to the ongoing security of Queen and country, if not the only thing standing between the entire world and all-out  war. (Ian had no idea what exactly the information was; there hadn’t been time to go over specifics since the theft. But it was always something extremely important and certain to cause catastrophe in enemy hands.)

This particular thief was especially sly and quick, staying one step ahead of 007 at every turn so far, but he could feel that the tables were about to turn. The train was due soon; he scanned the crowd gathered on the platform for his target’s black leather jacket and long, sleek ponytail.

“11 o’clock, Ian,” Q’s voice crackled in his earpiece, the tech genius observing the action from the relative safety of MI-6 headquarters via the video feed in Ian’s Clark Kent-ish tortoiseshell glasses.

He shifted his focus accordingly and spotted her trying to move down the platform, but her progress was blocked by a large brick pillar and a clump of oblivious tourists. The sound of the approaching train prompted Ian to settle on a plan; he was almost positive she’d try to use it to make her getaway so he made himself as inconspicuous as possible, hoping to lull her into a false sense of security but still keeping tabs out of the corner of his eye.

The train screeched to a halt and just as he’d predicted, the thief boarded without hesitation. Ian boarded the same car through the next set of doors, putting on a baseball cap and pulling it low over his eyes as he grabbed onto one of the metal center poles and scoped out his new surroundings.

She was standing right next to the door, facing his direction, but luckily hadn’t seemed to spot him yet and was now pulling something from her pocket—a phone, maybe? Or the flash drive he was after? He craned his neck for a better look but curiosity made him careless. The sudden movement was enough to draw the thief’s attention, and his cover was blown instantly.

The timing couldn’t have been worse—she spotted him and bolted off the car just as the doors slid shut, leaving Ian trapped on the moving train. Too far away from the rear compartment to make an exit in time, he could only watch in frustration as she darted across the now-deserted platform and began climbing the stairs back to the surface.

“Fuck,” he couldn’t help but mutter.

“Ian, we’re tracking her on CCTV now,” came Q’s calm, reassuring voice through the earpiece. “Get off at the next stop and I’ll direct you from there.”

The ride to the next stop was a couple of minutes long at most but felt like an eternity to Ian, stuck on the car and feeling completely fucking useless. At last a bell rang to signal the stop; before the pleasant female voice on the intercom had even finished announcing the station name, Ian was off the train and sprinting across the platform to the stairs.

“She’s about two blocks north of you now, 007,” said Q, “still on foot.”

Ian scanned the crowd on the sidewalk and found what he was looking for, commandeering a bike from a young, gangly courier.

“Oi!” the boy called after him angrily.

“Thank you,” Ian replied as he mounted the bike. His progress was quicker than on foot but still frustratingly slow, blocked by what seemed like a larger than usual number of clueless or stubborn pedestrians.

“Move!” he shouted to a wide-eyed young woman pushing a pram, who let out a high-pitched squeal but got out of his path just in time. His target was in sight now, and close enough that his warning also alerted her to his presence. It definitely wasn’t a good day for stealth.

The thief took off at a sprint, but soon happened across a parked Vespa that was better suited to her escape. She climbed on and gunned it, instantly disappearing into the heavy London traffic.

Of course no other abandoned motorbikes were immediately available, but there was one zooming directly toward him; Ian stepped out onto the street directly in front of it, drawing his standard-issue Walther PPK just in case the driver had any second thoughts about stopping.

The scooter screeched to a halt only a foot away from him, which was a little too close for comfort, but Ian set his jaw and made sure his expression betrayed nothing but steely resolve. Sufficiently intimidated, the helmeted driver dismounted without sign of protest, and Ian hopped on and accelerated.

“You’re still tracking her, right?” he asked over the wireless connection as he wove in and out of traffic.

“Affermative,” said Q, “take the next left.”

The next left happened to be less than half a block away; Ian made a hard turn and cringed a little at the sound of squealing tires and crunching metal as the cars that he'd cut off piled up behind him.

“A little more warning would be nice,” he informed Q.

“Right, I’ll do my best. I’m not a bloody GPS, though. Oh! She’s taken that roundabout,” he added. “Still going straight ahead, though.”

Ian saw an opportunity to make up for lost time, bracing himself for a bumpy ride as he hopped the motorbike up the curb and cut across the roundabout.

“It looks like she’s heading for the bridge now, probably en route to the airport.”

“Yeah, well I don’t think she’s going to make her flight,” said Ian, hitting the gas hard as the traffic cleared.

A couple more shortcuts and Ian was at the bridge; Q reported that the target had not yet arrived but was definitely moving that way.

“Three blocks away from you now,” he updated. “Two blocks…”

Ian tensed, training his eyes on the road, pistol drawn again. There was a long radio silence, and no sign of the thief or her vehicle.

“Q?” he asked, feeling in his gut that something had gone wrong.

“I… um,” came the entirely unhelpful response.

“What’s the matter?”

“We lost her,” Q admitted, the shocked disbelief in his voice coming through crystal clear. “She’s just… gone.”

“Bullshit,” said Ian. “She can’t be 'just gone.' Keep checking,” he demanded as he restarted his motorbike and took off in the direction of the last sighting. It was a pointless effort, mainly an attempt to ease his guilt and frustration for blowing the whole mission.

“Anything?” he made one last, desperate inquiry.

“Nothing,” Q confirmed. “Our agents at the airport have been alerted; she won’t make it out of the country. “

“I’ll head there now,” said Ian, making a sharp U-turn.

“Negative, 007, time to come in,” a new voice cut in, older, female and steel-edged. “You’ve done enough for today.”

Ian knew that voice and the woman behind it well enough to recognize that it wasn’t a compliment, but he swallowed his pride, gritted his teeth and gave the expected reply.

“Yes, Mum.”

* * *

He knew it was bad when Moneypenny didn’t even have a flirtatious comment for him, simply saying, “She’s ready for you now,” with a pitying look.

Ian steeled himself, pulled open the stately mahogany doors and walked into the mouth of the dragon.

Known to everyone else as the office of the Head of Secret Intelligence Service, it was designed to convey a sense of history and dignity, with heavy dark green drapes drawn over the floor-to-ceiling windows, oil portraits of former directors lining the walls, and a large, imposing cherry wood desk in the center of the room. It was calculated, in other words, to intimidate, and that mission was definitely accomplished.

But in Ian Gallagher’s experience, by far the most intimidating thing about the room was the woman behind the desk, mid-60s, with cropped silver hair, a no-nonsense blazer and an expression that assured you she was not to be fucked with.

“People said I was crazy, you know,” M began abruptly, turning the full force of her ever-calculating gaze on Ian as she addressed him, “when I found you running street scams with the rest of London’s riff raff and insisted you had what it took. That you could, in fact, become one of our greatest. I spent a lot of personal and political capital convincing very powerful, very stubborn people to let me recruit you, and up till now it’s paid off.”

Ian knew all of this but waited patiently for M to get to the point; harsh as she could  be, it wasn’t her style to rub salt in a wound for no reason.

“Today was a colossal fuck-up,” she stated bluntly. “I’ve already had… pressure from certain factions to restrict or even eliminate your role in the field. But,” she added, “as I believe they say in your home country, nobody bats a thousand.”

Ian looked up from his intent study of the carpet and was surprised to see a slight twinkle in her eye; this was definitely not going the way he’d expected.

“So, what exactly are you saying?” he ventured to ask.

“You’re still one of our best, 007,” she told him. “And the mission is still yours. Assuming you’re up for it, of course…”

“Oh, I am,” Ian assured her, trying not to sound too eager even as he felt a huge weight lifted off his shoulders.

It could have been his imagination, as M almost never showed any emotion other than disappointment, but he thought he saw a faint smile playing at the corners of her lips. “Good.”

She typed a string of commands on the desk keyboard and a large screen descended from the ceiling to cover the window; a few more taps and an image of her own computer screen was projected there.

Ian instantly recognized the first photo she pulled up.

“This is the woman who infiltrated our archives and stole something very valuable and very dangerous—but more on that in a moment. This mug shot was provided by our friends in American law enforcement; Ellie Porter is an alias she was arrested under two years ago.”

M tapped her keyboard and another mug shot appeared alongside the first, this one of a male with the same dark hair and belligerent expression.

“And I’m guessing that’s not Adam Fisher,” Ian said, reading the name printed on the man's Cook County Department of Corrections placard.

“Correct. From what we know, they go by Mickey and Mandy, a brother/sister team based out of Chicago that's been up to no good for years: small-time drugs and guns, some solicitation.

“According to the CIA they’re employed by their father, about whom we have even less intelligence: he’s known only as the Bulldog.” M pulled up a new photo, pixelated security camera footage of a man with graying hair and a nasty scowl who could have been anywhere from his 40s to 60s . “He’s a local kingpin—name a crime and he’s probably been connected to it—but a slippery one, and from what I understand the CIA has always felt they had bigger fish to fry.”

“Guess they fucked that up, huh?”

“You and I are both well aware of the shortcomings of American intelligence agencies,” M agreed, “but I do see their logic here. There’s absolutely nothing to indicate that the Bulldog was about to make an international play—it’s like if a member of your office football team suddenly qualified for the national squad. There’s just no precedent.”

“Okay, so what’s the big deal? What did they steal?”

M let out a tired sigh, and for the first time Ian wondered if retirement was somewhere in her future. “007, what I’m about to tell you does not leave this room under any circumstances, am I clear?”

Ian nodded. “Yeah, of course.”

“Good. Because the stolen data consists of launch codes for Russian nuclear satellite missiles.” She paused for a moment to let that information sink in.

“Holy shit,” said Ian as he realized the implications.

“Holy shit, indeed,” M confirmed. “Those codes were obtained at great cost: it was a calculated risk, deemed a necessary safeguard by certain individuals with more clout and less faith in diplomatic processes than me. We assume the codes can be changed by the Russians if compromised, however…”

“That would mean letting them know that we had them in the first place,” Ian finished.

“Exactly. Obviously we’d prefer to take care of it in-house and leave the Russians none the wiser; it’s an extremely delicate situation, and I trust you to use your customary discretion.”

“Do you know where the codes are now?”

M shook her head. “Despite our best efforts, Miss Mandy seems to have slipped out of the country. We suspect she’s en route back to her father’s operation in the U.S., but we’re waiting for a confirmed sighting before pursuing. So keep your phone on, Gallagher, and don’t forget to see Q before you leave today; I understand he has some goodies for you.”

“Yes, Mum,” Ian said formally, recognizing the dismissal. “I know the drill.”

“Oh, and Ian?” she added as an afterthought.

He’d been headed for the door, but turned to receive his additional instructions.

“Don’t let me down this time.”

* * *

No matter how many times Ian visited the MI-6 lab, he couldn’t help but feel a little awed by the high-tech gear on display: sleek high-end cars with hubcap lasers and retractable spikes, lighters that doubled as tracking devices, bagpipes with hidden machine guns. Okay, so some of it seemed a little unnecessary, but it was all just so freaking cool.

Ian did his best to hide his enthusiasm from Q, the lanky, bespectacled geek who ran MI-6’s research and development branch. Q had the annoying arrogance of someone who knew he was the smartest person in the room, but Ian couldn’t help but like the fucker anyway.

“You’re not getting the car this go-around, sadly,” Q informed him as he caught Ian eyeing the sleek silver Aston Martin longingly. “Apparently shipping it overseas isn’t a responsible use of budget. Especially since you’d probably just blow it up anyway.”

“What?” Ian asked, offended at the insinuation. “When have I ever—”

“All of them,” Q interrupted. “You’ve blown up every car you’ve ever used; I think it’s an agency record.”

“Really?”

Q shrugged. “Anyway, here’s your consolation prize.”

He held up what appeared to be simply a glossy black wrist cuff, but with the flip of a switch became a fully functional touchscreen tablet. “4G, access to MI-6 databases, GPS, basically anything you might need. Also Flappy Bird,” he added. “It’s locked to your fingerprint, so it can't be hacked too easily. And if you’re being forced to open it under duress, just use your thumb instead of your forefinger and it’s programmed to fry the circuits instead.

“The rest is standard communication equipment; unfortunately because of the distance and time delay, your earpiece and glasses won’t be effective.”

“So I’m on my own then, huh?” Ian paraphrased.

“Try not to think of it as abandonment,” Q suggested, “think of it as freedom.”

* * *

Freedom was exactly what Ian had in mind when he dressed up in one of his favorite Saint Laurent suits (not everything he’d been led to believe about the glamorous secret-agent life had been a lie) and paid a visit to his favorite bar. The sleek, modern interior was all clean lines, stainless steel and shades of black, a far cry from the neighborhood dive bar of his youth and the depressing sense of ongoing and inevitable decay it embodied.

That hopeless sense that everything was falling apart was one of the many reasons he’d been determined to get out as a sad, angry 17-year-old kid; nowhere in the country had seemed far enough away to truly escape, so he saved up the earnings from his shitty clerk job to get a real, legitimate passport, waited agonizingly for 6 weeks until it arrived, and took the bus to O’Hare on the day it came. He’d headed straight for the international terminal and lifted an unsuspecting businessman’s ticket from right under his nose; the flight was a red-eye but Ian didn’t sleep a wink, partly because he was terrified of being caught but mainly because for the first time that he could remember the future seemed bright and full of possibility.

Immediately upon landing it became clear that he’d made a mistake; he had nowhere to go, nothing to eat, and not a penny to his name. Hell, he didn’t even know if the English used pennies. Back home he’d been used to going without, but at least he’d always had a roof over his head. In London he had absolutely nothing, except for a small gang of fellow runaways he’d recruited to help him run old cons on new targets, scraping together whatever money they could for food, or more often than not, drugs and booze.

Until M had spied him posing as a valet in an ingenious parking scam and seen his potential for something more. He could hardly believe the offer when she made it, and accepting was a no-brainer. He would have said she was a true guardian angel, if he’d believed in that sort of thing.

But Ian only believed in luck, like the kind that now found him seated just down the bar from a ridiculously handsome guy with chiseled cheekbones, a close-cropped fade haircut and a fitted T-shirt cut to show off his extremely well-defined biceps. Ian knew he was on call, but Jesus, what was he supposed to do when an opportunity like this arose? He got the attention of Felix, one of his regular bartenders, as a phrase M had used earlier rang in his ears: _Calculated risk_.

“The usual, please,” said Ian, sliding his card across the translucent bar top. “And um, one for my friend down there.”

“Ah,” Felix said approvingly as he followed Ian’s gaze. “Not planning on leaving alone tonight, are we?”

Ian allowed himself a cocky smirk as he sipped his martini. “Do I ever?”

* * *

“Yes. Yes, oh fuck, yes,” came the ecstatic moans of the guy from the bar (Ian had forgotten his name already—Albert? Alfred?) as he braced himself against the headboard and Ian pounded into him with abandon, channeling all of his frustrations and tension into the simple act of fucking.

Albert(?) removed a hand from the headboard to stroke himself, but Ian immediately grabbed his wrist and put it back.

“Wait,” Ian instructed. “Me first.”

* * *

“Fuck,” said Albert as he collapsed on his back, his melodic Northern accent making the word sound even more delicious than usual. “I love you.”

“Bullshit,” Ian replied with a grin, climbing on top of his conquest and planting a line of lazy kisses down his smooth, toned chest. “You don’t even know me.”

“Yes I do,” Albert insisted. “You’re a—oh,” he gasped as Ian’s tongue made its first long, slow swipe down the length of his cock. “You’re a ginger sex god, Ian Gallagher,” he continued breathlessly through Ian’s relentless ministrations, “You’re fucking Apollo, come down from Mount Olympus to utterly destroy me. You— fuck," he was forced to stop again, hands curling into tight fists as Ian took the length of him into his mouth. "Oh my god, I’m doomed…”  

 

**Author's Note:**

> on tumblr @ gallagherfamilyreunion/share [this post](http://gallagherfamilyreunion.tumblr.com/post/93256650915/calculated-risks-chapter-1-archive-of-our) if you like :)


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